The 8 Dishes That Made My Career: Cesare Casella

While many of today’s chefs forecast their passion for food with tattoos depicting butchering diagrams and meat cleavers, Cesare Casella has an even more visceral way of declaring his trade: A generous bouquet of rosemary tucked into his breast pocket. He calls it his droga (drug), and it serves as a fitting cologne for a man who traces his love of cooking back to his mother’s herb garden in Italy.

While he may not have dreamed that he’d one day be running the two uptown locations of Salumeria Rosi Parmacotto in NYC, Casella has been in the kitchen since before he could walk—his parents, grandmother, and aunts ran a restaurant out of the first floor of their house in Lucca, Italy. “The restaurant kitchen was also the kitchen where we ate. In the morning, we used the bar for the breakfast room,” he says of growing up above Vipore (which would later earn a Michelin star with Caeslla behind the burner). Food was “the only priority,” and Casella remembers how every family conversation seemed to revolve around the next meal.

But while it seemed like fate that Casella would pursue a career in cooking, his parents fought him when he decided that he wanted to attend culinary school, telling him he had to work and pay his own way. He enrolled anyway at a school in Montacatini, boarding a train at 6:30am each day to get there. The ride to class—located between Lucca and Florence—gave him a chance to experience other regional dishes (like tripe sandwiches in the Tuscan capital) that would later influence his menus.

He got his first taste of New York consulting for the restaurant Coco Pazzo, working with the legendary restaurateur Pino Luongo (“I thought, New York is not so bad,” he chuckles). But he truly began to dig his feet in when he started running the show at his own spots—Beppe, Meremma, and finally, the two Saulmerias.

Along the journey, Casella has demonstrated a knack for soaking up new flavors while always honoring the traditions of his family and the ingredients from the mountains of Lucca. His first experience with barbecue inspired him to create Italian-style spare ribs, while a sandwich at a hole-in-the-wall Cuban spot led to the creation of the Cubano Tuscano.

Here, Casella takes us back to the mountains of Lucca, charting his path from tripe-eating toddler to one of New York’s most beloved ambassadors of Tuscan cuisine.

My grandmother and grandfather were born in the mountains of Lucca. My mother came from there too. They used farro a lot in soups. Then they started using it like rice or risotto, because it gave the same flavor, but with better texture. It had been very popular from the 1200-1500s, until wheat took over and people stopped growing it, because it was no longer profitable. Then around the 1970s or 1980s, people started using it again, though I had eaten it my whole life.
I like it because it has the same flavor as risotto, but there is no problem with cooking it al dente. For me, [to eat it] is to remember going to the mountains with my father and grandmother. Memories make me happy when I am cooking. In the restaurant I use it in so many dishes. I like it with fresh tomatoes that are very ripe, and mozzarella or burrata for a salad. The farro salads are so good. We serve this grilled veal chop with beans, collard greens, and farro. They are bubbly when you eat them.

2. Moonshine mac and cheese

The first time I ever had macaroni and cheese was for sure in the United States, but I don’t remember where. It reminded me of something you make at home in Italy, like pasta with butter and parmigiana or grano padano, but I didn’t like the idea. It is not really like [the dish] in Italy because the butter they have there is great—ours was made by my grandmother, or my father would buy it in the mountains—but here the butter doesn’t taste that way and the cheese is shitty.
In the 1970s or ’80s vodka was introduced in Italian discos, but before that it wasn’t well known in Italy. That’s when they started to make penne alla vodka, which is practically just cream, tomato sauce, and vodka. Years later, when I was in New York, a friend of mine arrived at Maremma and brought me a bottle of moonshine [unaged whiskey], but I didn’t know what it was. I tasted it and it was so disgusting, so strong and smelly. But this was my good friend and I don’t like to lie, so I thought, maybe I’ll make something.I thought about mac and cheese and penne alla vodka and I just blended them together. I put in moonshine in instead of vodka, and then a lot of cheese, just like in mac and cheese. It turned out that it is a very popular dish. I still make it for people who request the moonshine pasta today. People love it.

3. Tripe

In Italy, my mamma was always going and making sure that when they butcher the cow, the tripe was cleaned very well because you need to be careful. My mom was very picky about choosing the right butcher, and my father was even pickier than her. They knew the cow, the cow’s family, the butcher, and so their routine was very religious. My grandfather absolutely loved tripe. He was feeding me tripe as baby food. When I went to school in Montecatini, sometimes I would forget to get off the train and I would go to Florence. Then I would go to the market to all the food carts, and one thing they served a lot of is a sandwich of tripe. It is pieces of boiled stomach with salsa verde on bread.
At all my restaurants I use tripe. I make it in a stew like trippa alla parmigiana with tomato and cheese, or in tripe salad. It can be very difficult to sell in the United States, but I sell a lot of it at the Salumeria because people come there specifically for it. I am using whatever good stomach I can find, because it is not readily available.

4. Cuban Sandwich (Cubano Toscano)

I had my first Cuban sandwich in New York many years ago, somewhere downtown below Chelsea at a really small, local place that isn’t there anymore. I was with a friend and I didn’t know what it was, but I thought it was very good. It was a really different experience for me because in Italy the open sandwiches are toasted, but you don’t really have any that are hot with melted cheese. I was surprised, and I remember thinking, I want to make this better, make it a Cubano Tuscano.
I make it with porchetta—which I make with rosemary and garlic, my droga [drug]—pickles, peppers, provolone cheese (which is not from Tuscany but is better), and this spicy sauce called Bomba Calabrese, because I think it gives it much more flavor. The first time I made it, I used a brick from the chicken to press it, with Tuscan bread. I changed the Cubano for my own palato.

5. BBQ spare ribs

I’m not sure if it was my first time having them in New York, but I remember Virgil’s barbecue. I had spare ribs at another few places, too. I loved the spices in the sauce. In Italy, we have spare ribs, and I used to make them in the restaurant in Lucca. We roast them differently, and they are dry. But I liked the fact that here, you are eating them with your hands and then licking your fingers—all these things that make the moment. This moment with the food is very specific, not only about the food itself, but [also] your company, just…all of it. You can eat that same food at another moment and it won’t give you that memory. Later on, I started making ribs at Beppe in 2001 and Maremma after, and then everywhere. The people who know me expect this dish from me.

This is a dish that I began making 30 years ago. It is a funny story: I love making ancient cuisine and I love art, and I was reading an autobiography by Pontormo—the painter—where he talks about the 15th century when the Medicis were in charge. The Medici family calls him to go to the court to dine, and he describes the place where he stays while he’s there. He talks about what he sees: a chicken coop, a vegetable garden, and rigatino (like Tuscan bacon). From this [description], I was inspired and I put these three ingredients together (eggs, pancetta, prosciutto) to make the salad. I presented it as an ancient dish from the 15th century from Pontormo, and people in the restaurant started calling it just that. Then other restaurants also started to make the dish and say that it was ancient, and so I could not say that I made it up.
One day, I had an interview in Italy and the reporter says, “Ah, you have in your menu an ancient dish that you copied from another restaurant!” Now, if other people want to repeat a dish of mine, I do not care—that is nice. But if they tell me that I copied it from somebody else, this ancient dish—one that I made up—it made me so upset! So I say, "Listen, this dish is not ancient, I made it up years ago; it didn’t exist before!" By then it was already in a few books where they talk about it being ancient, but it is not true. Do your research, because it does not exist. That was funny, but either way the dish is great. At every restaurant—from the ones in Italy to each one that I own now—I make it. Too many people ask for it not to.

The first time I ate this was at Lorenzo Ristorante in Forte dei Marmi. The restaurant is incredible and now it has two Michelin stars. The dish is essentially an octopus terrine, but without the gelatin because that comes naturally from the octopus. It was the simplicity that I liked so much. When I was in Italy it was very rare for me to cook fish in the restaurant. I would only make merluzzo [cod] or another few that were of quality. I was cooking fish only for myself at home, even though I was only 30 minutes from the sea. But 30 or 40 years ago, if you weren’t from the sea, you didn’t really cook it often.

I started making this dish 25 years ago, and it is in my first book that I wrote [True Tuscan; Morrow, 2005]. The inspiration comes from a place I went in Côte d'Azur. I made [this dish] at Lucca because I went on a diet and I was looking for dishes that were light with no fat and no oil. At the same time, it was also the memory of this dish and its ingredients—the tomatoes and vegetables—that was so important. The meat is practically cooked by the steam of the tomato. You close the pot, and the tomato starts to cook, and the steam [rises] and cooks the meat. It is a process that makes it light but flavorful. I continue to make it the same way today, but I sometimes change the ingredients. I will not use the tomato if it is not good, but I get so many requests so it is on the menu.

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